The Entombment

Adriaen Isenbrandt's Entombment, an unusually intimate Passion image executed on paper and now at the National Gallery in London, represents a rare example of a Flemish devotional work on a support typically associated with drawing rather than finished painting. Isenbrandt, active in Bruges in the first half of the sixteenth century, was a follower of Gerard David whose work maintained the high technical standards of the Bruges tradition while accommodating the demand for smaller, more portable devotional objects. An Entombment on paper may have served as a model, a collector's piece, or an unusually refined devotional object for private use. The subject — Christ's body being placed in the rock-cut tomb by Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and the holy women — is the moment of final human care for the body before the Resurrection renders human action irrelevant.

Working in oil or tempera on paper required careful preparation to prevent the support from absorbing the medium unevenly. Paper's flexibility made it unsuitable for the broad, sweeping passages of large-scale panel painting, but its smooth surface rewarded the finest, most detailed brushwork. The intimate scale of a paper support suited a devotional image intended for close personal inspection rather than public viewing.